


Undertow

by pindenial



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: I'm in love with Tommy and so is Alex, M/M, Porn and Feelings, That's the Entire Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 13:11:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11898432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pindenial/pseuds/pindenial
Summary: "They glisten when he’s mad, Tommy’s eyes, and Alex sometimes longs for it. Stokes the flame from a smoulder to an inferno and hopes that someday it will consume him."A study in Tommy.





	Undertow

**Author's Note:**

> This spawned from the distinct lack of Alex/Tommy fics that go deep into Alex's psychology. In many ways, this completely missed the mark. Title comes from the Years and Years song 'Without' because I'm an angst dealer. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, as always.

By the time Alex had been dragged from the water and onto the splintering wood of the mole, he had been damp for almost three days. Colour had stopped existing weeks into the war, but there was a bleakness to Dunkirk that frayed the senses, made every man on the beach- hundreds of thousands of them- question what he was living for. 

Tommy, when Alex first saw him, was a colourless thing. Dark, unreadable eyes were sunken into his face and he looked as grey as Alex felt. But his hands had been strong, nimble grasp hauling him to safety. And for that, Alex had been grateful. Thought rightly when he guessed that Tommy would improve his odds of survival. Stuck to him like tree sap. 

Alex’s memory from the days following are patchy at best, chalks it up to dehydration. But he remembers the trawler, remembers what he said, the things he did. It might still make his stomach churn but it was also the first moment, in the deepest dark of the ship’s belly, that Tommy coloured Alex’s world. 

Tommy’s desire to survive was a savage, beastly thing. But so was his ability to pity those who didn’t. If Alex shuts his eyes he can still feel the collar of Tommy’s uniform, rough in his grip. Scorching anger on vulpine features, concern swimming in hungry eyes. Concern for the mute, for Gibson. 

Dead weight, in the end. Driftwood. 

They glisten when he’s mad, Tommy’s eyes, and Alex sometimes longs for it. Stokes the flame from a smoulder to an inferno and hopes that someday it will consume him.

Alex would soon discover that behind those eyes, Tommy was a universe. Every moment in the passing days, he expanded before Alex, vaster and deeper and more intricate than Alex could have imagined.  

It wasn’t always good. 

Two nights after their return from Dunkirk, Alex woke to drowning. Lungs aching, he couldn’t draw breath, gasped as the smell of the ocean, of oil, came hurtling back. He opened his eyes and found them once more, like glittering beetles in the gloom. Tommy was hovering over him, face an empty canvas but for his gaze that was so full of anguish that, even without the hands on his throat, he might have left Alex breathless. 

Fingers pressed harshly onto Alex’s windpipe as he muttered, “Did you kill him?” Looking back, it almost sounded like begging. 

Alex remembers clamouring then, hands scrambling for purchase through air, not water. He squeezed thin, powerful wrists, asking for mercy, muffled by sleep and darkness.

“Think so,” He wheezed out eventually, because Alex was never a liar. There was a quiet moment when he was sure Tommy would kill him, throttle him in his bed, on British soil. The ironies. But then, like the life simply bled out of him, Tommy’s shoulders sagged and his fingers slackened and Alex felt the burn of hot tears on his face. 

“I hate you,” Tommy had said then and kissed him crookedly on the mouth. Just once. Got up, and went outside to smoke. When he had returned, Alex had pretended to be sleeping, but his heart was racing, brain strangely quiet. The incident was never addressed but just like on the beach, Tommy continued to remain his shadow. 

But things were different. Alex could see it after they’d been saved, grinding against the inside of Tommy’s brain. The heady pull of regret and relief. The what ifs. It was different for Alex who had learned decades before Dunkirk that there was nothing fair about survival. About any of it, really. But it was simpler than before. Just point your gun and pull the trigger before the Krauts did it to you. Tommy’s compassion never fully he left him, though. Alex often thinks it's why Tommy let Alex love him at all. 

Because he did. Took him no time to realise as the days passed by in minutes and hours.  Sleepless nights and foggy, tired days. Years later, time still passes strangely for Alex. Jitters and rattles, thumping against his consciousness. There are times when even his heartbeat, his pulse are distracting, drowns himself in large crowds just to get away from them. Takes comfort in the liveliness of others the way Tommy can’t, not anymore. 

It was simultaneously slow and terribly fast. As days passed and the swell of anticipation of when (not if) they would be redeployed reached its apogee, Alex made it his business to learn that Tommy reacted well to sarcasm, badly to insults. He liked puns and books and always huffed out a laugh when Alex utterly destroyed Tommy’s favourite songs with his terrible singing skills. That in moments he was sure Alex’s attention was elsewhere (which was never really, not anymore- the very small bit of Alex that was human had found its reflection in Tommy and amid the trauma and the beach and the blood, Alex had tied them together, though he hadn’t known it then) he would watch Alex like he was a bad smell or a very complicated puzzle. 

The nights they couldn’t sleep, most nights, they would steal out into the clarifying summer air. It always happened the same. One would stir, dress and leave. Moments later, the other would simply appear, wordless. They would smoke until they had blocked out the foreboding and distant smell of the ocean. 

Tommy talked, then, the darkness giving him courage. He talked about his sisters and parents and Alex would talk about anything but. Tommy played the clarinet. His dad was a greengrocer. His teeth were crooked in the most unrefined and beautiful way and every time he swallowed, the dip and bob of his Adam’s apple, all Alex could think was that Tommy was carved for tenderness. 

Alex was restless, always craving distraction. He wasn’t a thinker because stopping to think was dangerous, especially now when thoughts lay in two simple directions, on two boys from a french beach that Alex longed to forget. 

Tommy was different, a glassy pool at the heart of a hurricane. Marble-faced, his sadness was a subdued affair. Tommy’s hands shook when made his bed up in the morning. Agonised over letters home. Watched Alex jealously when Alex played cards with other soldiers but shunned any invitation to join them. It was arresting. 

On a night maybe weeks after their rescue, the cloud hung low overhead and the night pressed down around them. It was dark under the trees, away from the village and the large stately house that the army had commandeered. The smell of cut grass was ripe in the air. The last smoke from their cigarettes folded into nothingness and the silence that settled between them was just a half-step short of comforting.

Though he couldn’t see him properly, Alex knew Tommy was looking at him. Not looking, but  _ looking.  _ His mouth was set firm, a pale line in the gloom and for once Alex couldn’t make out Tommy’s eyes but it didn’t matter because Alex could feel them on his face, more solidly than he had felt anything in weeks. Without thinking, Alex reached out for it.

“Can I kiss you?” Alex had asked, the syllables shattering whatever ghostly tension lay between them.  _ Gibson _ . He had felt Tommy shuffle, his own body frozen to whatever damp root he had settled on. Misstepped and broken everything, probably. Until Alex felt the pressure, the sweetest, warmest pressure he’d ever known. 

Tommy’s lips were chapped. It felt like a whisper, warm and secret and lovely. Thought about the last time Tommy had kissed him, said that he hated him. Alex knew better than to take any of it for granted. Slipped a hand into dark hair and admired its softness, sighed a moan into cold lips. Alex liked girls, couldn’t say he liked kissing blokes for sure, but he liked kissing Tommy. 

Deepening the kiss, Tommy kissed him like he hated Alex and that shouldn’t have done anything for Alex, but it  _ did.  _ Because Alex deserved it. Because Alex dressed himself in his arrogance because it was easier that way, deflected better at the expense of whoever happened to be stood nearest to him. Poor frog. Poor Tom.

And as suddenly as it had started, it was over. Pulling away, Tommy fumbled for a moment before lighting up a cigarette. The crack of a match and suddenly there were Tommy’s clouded eyes, watching Alex. Even days after, Alex remembered the sound of his heart hammering in his ears at the sight, the feeling of Tommy’s hands on his throat, the swirling want for everything that was Tommy, his hatred and his lust. And then the cold feeling settling over Alex because he knew it then, like a scab that had been pulled back to reveal the fresh, pink wound beneath, oozing- Alex was fucked. 

The soldiers were gathered up, not long after, reformed into regiments and platoons and straight lines and Alex fell into it easily. Because this was what he was good for. 

But Tommy was smart like Alex wasn’t. At school, Alex had been the class clown. When even the thought of sitting still was a struggle, there had never been much hope for the boy. He guarded it carefully but Alex could tell this had not been the case with Tommy. It was small things- the way the boy buried himself in a book, teeth biting gently into his lip as he slipped away from reality, through the window, and into some other world. Or the way Tommy listened to the radio, the same way he listened to people- avid and present, glowing. There were times Alex pressed at the door, pushed an eye to the keyhole, but the room where Tommy hid his passions was a locked, and secret place. 

Someone like Tommy should not have been wasted on a war. 

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise then, that when they were reassigned, it was Tommy that fell to pieces in his usual fashion- as quietly as possible. “Africa,” his voice was oddly strangled as they sat side by side on Tommy’s bunk. Rather than look at Alex, his hazel eyes were fixed on some indeterminate space ahead. Maybe he was back in Dunkirk or already stomping through the deserts of North Africa, in his too-big uniform, but he was far, far away from Alex and it made him ache.

The sun had come out that day, dragging the men outside to prepare, to spend their last days of freedom in the village with civilians and each other before they were scattered once more. There was nobody around to see Alex slipping his hand into Tommy’s, lacing their fingers together. “What were you expecting? That they’d keep us here forever?”

Maybe it was the sharpness of Alex’s words, or the freshness of his grief, but Tommy suddenly wrenched his hand from Alex’s, face harsh and ugly. “I know that.” He spat, body tense, “I just didn’t…”

He trailed off, shoulders falling limp as he met Alex’s gaze. Alex was unprepared for the vast sadness there, water breaking and Alex falling and falling, and drowning because of course Alex hadn’t thought about it until just then and the darkness in Tommy’s gaze had his stomach in knots.  

“Christ,” Alex was going far away to die in a trench without him. 

“Alex,” Tommy breathed, and Alex’s hands were on him in moments, panic rising in his gut because nothing had made Alex feel alive like Tommy had: A livewire, the open wound on Alex’s psyche. Tommy’s arms felt crushing around him.

And before he could even worry about people seeing them, Alex was kissing Tommy. Tommy, who was solid and there, _ he was always there _ , hands tugging at Alex’s clothes like there was a solution to his madness, his grief, hidden beneath them. 

His cheeks were red when Tommy finally got his hand on Alex’s cock, breathing already ragged. And it shouldn’t have taken Alex that long to realise that Tom wanted him like that, but it did. The thought alone lit his skin on fire. 

Alex couldn’t help himself when his hands found strong, wiry thighs, hard cock, belt buckle. Couldn’t help himself as he pushed Tommy down onto the bed and swallowed his bitten off moans as Tommy fucked into Alex’s fist, half-dressed and wanton. He came with a high keen, body taut and arching against Alex and Alex couldn’t recall the last time he had felt as turned on. 

It took Tommy moments to bring Alex off after that, as the pink flush on his face and hunger in his eyes stained onto Alex’s memory. Just like on the mole, Tommy’s hands were steady as they gripped Alex, pulled him back into the world of the living as Alex came with a cry of his own. He looked at the mess on Tommy’s hip, the mess of his hair, and smiled. 

It was Tommy who broke the silence. “Next time we do this,” he said, voice a quiet and steady murmur, “I’m going to insist we at least take our shoes off.”

Next time. Yeah, Alex liked the sound of that. 

The day Tommy left, Alex pressed a kiss to his head. The anxiety was painted thickly in Tommy’s pale face, but there was resolution to his posture that caused Alex’s heart to skip. His gaze was steady. 

“I’ll see you when I get back, Alex.” Tommy said into Alex’s throat and the pain in Alex’s chest was almost unbearable. His mouth was dry as he bit back tears, couldn’t bring himself to feel embarrassed. 

“Next time,” Alex said and could feel Tommy’s smile, the entire universe encased in Alex’s reach. “Come home, yeah?”

Tommy was never one to break a promise. 


End file.
